Vetiver Rising

It was good to be back after a while at the Café de la Danse last Friday evening. It’s one of my favorite venues in town; it’s a place where I saw great performances in the past from a large selection of bands.
It was good also to see Vetiver playing live again two years after their last stop at the Maroquinerie (LS/2006/09) and to have a little chat with Andy Cabic again. Finishing a long European tour the band will be heading home (San Francisco) right after a last stop at the Glastonbury Festival next Sunday. Last Friday, the same night, you had Bruce Springsteen in a stadium close to Paris, but for me, no hesitation, I preferred to be in the Café de la Danse enjoying what Andy Cabic called “a lovely show”.
As usual Vetiver played with a relaxed style, comfortable and easy. The setlist consisted of songs from there previous albums and new ones just wrote during the tour. For the encore, they offered to the audience two covers songs: Michael Hurley’s Blue Driver and I Must Be In A Good Place Now, from Bobby Charles' 1972 self-titled album. Those two songs can be found in an excellent cover record released last may, Thing of the Past (Fat Cat Records), a 12-song collection that features tracks by an odd assortment of characters, both legendary and forgotten. Let me tell you that it’s not just another cover record, the song selection is excellent and the interpretation very much inspired. Highly recommended.

Web: vetiverse.com/blog
MySpace: myspace.com/vetiverse
More info: midheaven.com/artists/vetiver.html

Vetiver - Blue Driver .m3u
Vetiver - I Must Be In A Good Place .m3u

Vetiver - Farther On .mp3
Vetiver - Maureen .mp3 via Girlpants

Bonus: Michael Hurley - The Werewolf .mp3
Bobby Charles - Small Town Talk .mp3 via The Rising Storm (a great blog!)

Photo: Leaky Sparrow – Vetiver – Café de la Danse, Paris – Friday June 27, 2008

More pictures here.